twenty-seven

This Is Ed McMahon,
Going Bananas

The memories of the wild wackiness of the show still burn brightly for me. One particularly crazy episode was the night of what I call the Great Egg Toss. It all began when Dom DeLuise came out to do an elaborate trick. He put five raw eggs on top of matchbooks that covered five glasses of water standing on a tray.

“I’m going to hit this tray with this broom handle,” said Dom, “and all the eggs will fall into the glasses.”

Johnny, of course, knew much more impressive tricks, but he was a good sport and pretended that Dom’s trick required more skill than could be flaunted by a six-year-old.

“I’m going to count to three,” said Dom.

“You can get that high, can you?” said Johnny. “That’s trick enough.”

“All right . . . one . . . two . . . three!”

Dom smacked the tray and all the eggs fell into the glasses.

Always competitive, Johnny now had to jump in and show Dom how he could juggle three eggs. Perhaps a bit jealous of Johnny’s legerdemain, Dom then tossed an egg at Johnny to see if Johnny knew how to take one on the head. Johnny returned the favor and threw a couple of eggs at Dom; and then Johnny thoughtfully included me in the fun by throwing an egg at me.

“Heeeeere’s scrambled!” I cried and threw the egg back, while Johnny and Dom exchanged a few more. The three of us were making a sentimental return to nursery school. And now, with his magician’s hands, Johnny cracked one egg over Dom’s head while dropping another inside his pants.

“You’re insane!” Dom cried. “You guys are bananas!”

Taking that as a slur on my good name, even though a banana I proudly was, I took another egg, cracked it, and dropped it down Dom’s pants, feeling that he certainly would have wanted two eggs sunny-side up.

Moments later, the three of us were a late-night omelet.

“Did you like your eggs over easy?” Johnny asked me after the show.

“When I sit on them, I like a little salt,” I replied.

“Two grown men.”

“Graduates of major universities.”

ANYTHING FOR A LAUGH

The following year, when one of these graduates had whipped cream squirted down his pants by Burt Reynolds, Johnny grabbed the can and I expected him to put a similar topping on Burt’s undershorts. Instead, however, Johnny again proved himself a master of the unexpected by squirting more whipped cream into his own shorts and then smiling in contentment. Every other comedian would have squirted Reynolds; but Johnny again proved his originality by turning his own privates into the cupcake.

One of the things I loved most about Johnny was that he would do anything for a laugh. I’ve mentioned the night he allowed a tarantula to crawl up his arm. There is not enough money in Bill Gates’s portfolio for me to do that. Another night, he broke a wooden panel with his head. And on still another, he fell from a high platform into an air bag—no, not an author promoting a book.

He once made a trampoline jump so high that he flew off camera. And one night, a special-effects man was explaining how a soldier in a foxhole was blown into the air by triggering a hidden explosion under a platform. Well, Johnny proceeded to die for NBC.

His build was slight, but his reservoir was deep.

A guest on one show began talking about the two cartoonists who invented Superman in the thirties.

“No,” said Johnny, “Nietzsche invented Superman long before that, but he changed only in German phone booths. He flew with the Red Baron, I believe.”

I had studied philosophy at Catholic University and I wondered if Johnny had studied philosophy too. After the show, I asked, “Johnny, Nietzsche? Where the hell did that come from?”

Tapping his head, he said, “Ed, I never throw anything away.”

Johnny, in fact, had a mental file of German philosophers.

One night, he asked Fernando Lamas, “Why did you go into movies?”

“Because it was a great way to meet broads,” Lamas said.

“Schopenhauer couldn’t have put it better,” Johnny replied.

I also try never to throw anything of value away, especially good wine; but one night on the show, I almost threw some on Johnny.

It was another one of those spontaneous moments that lit up the show for thirty years.

In doing a commercial for a competitor of Saran Wrap, I was to take a goblet of red wine, cover it with this wrap, and then turn it upside down to dramatically demonstrate that the wrap wouldn’t leak. However, when I turned over the goblet, it leaked.

As the audience laughed, Johnny began to take off.

“Very impressive, Ed,” he said. “You think the wine needs to breathe a little more? Or are you auditioning for a jamboree of the Laguna Elks? What other things can you not wrap with that stuff?

Is that the stuff the CIA uses for leaks?”

And now my instinct took over, the instinct that had moved me to cut off Johnny’s tie and slap his face and set fire to his misfiring jokes. With the wine, the glass, and the wrap, I went around to the front of Johnny’s desk. I had to prove that the wrap worked. Of course, at moments like this, it would have been fair to wonder how much longer I would work.

Summoning my courage, I filled the glass with wine, put on the wrap with the greatest care, and turned it upside down over Johnny’s head. In a miracle fit for the Bible, nothing leaked.

“Ed,” Johnny said, “the next time I have to wrap inverted glasses of wine, that’s the stuff for me.”